


Ash Like Snow

by spiderlilies



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Eleanor POV, F/F, Happy Ending, a certain chair does not make it out alive, post-S3 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 11:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8142023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderlilies/pseuds/spiderlilies
Summary: With Nassau burning around them, Eleanor revisits one of her greatest regrets: not leaving with Max, all those months ago, when she still had the chance.





	

There was a terrible, hollow feeling in the core of your being when realizing that you had almost made it. It hardly mattered what you had been striving for; a better occupation, a fresh romance, a successful bet in a tavern. What mattered was the _almost_ and the retrospective knowledge that, if you had tried a little harder or had made a different decision, you would have achieved your goals.

Eleanor was intimate with the almosts of her life. They were waiting on her pillow when she laid her head to rest, they were the first to greet her in the morning before she even opened her eyes, and, on particularly rough nights, they followed her into her dreams and painted her nightmares. The older she got, the more there were, and this year alone had added so many almosts that she was now slogging through the quagmire of her thoughts every waking hour. She _almost_ earned her father’s approval. She _almost_ made double last month’s profits. She _almost_ stayed with Charles the fifth time around in their juvenile dance between passion and defiance. None of those, however, haunted her so much as this:

“I almost left with you,” Eleanor said as she eased herself down to lean against the sacks of spices behind her—nutmeg and fucking saffron, which would have earned her enough to warrant a celebration and, in another time, she would have offered free drinks to everyone for a night.

Max’s hand tightened around hers and an attempt was made to pull her back to her feet, but she must have soon realized it was futile, because Max sank to the ground beside her in a tired heap. Sweat beaded on her forehead and the drops caught the glow of orange around them, and Eleanor could only think that Max was beautiful, even with her hair unkempt and makeup smudged as it was. There was never a time when Max was not beautiful. By comparison, Eleanor felt like her reckless ambition and selfish, turncoat life had marred her own features into those of a hideous, unrecognizable monster.

“Do you know why I bought your tavern after you were taken away by Hornigold?” Max began with the little laugh she made when she couldn’t quite believe her own course of action. “I thought you were to be hanged and it was all I would have to remember you by. The place, the position you chose over me. I refused to let anyone have more claim over it than I.” Her next laugh was bitter. “Do you remember? I told you that I could never leave you.”

Of course she remembered. Every syllable, every second of their parting had repeated in her head like a migraine of her greatest mistake. It was too late for regrets, but Eleanor regretted her decision all the same. That was the moment in the timeline of her life where she could place a pin and say _oh yes, this is where I took up shovel and began to dig my own grave._

“I have a boat waiting for us,” Eleanor said in echo of Max’s own words from that day.

“A boat?” Max repeated, recognition of the significance in the tremble of her voice.

There was a sick irony here, Eleanor knew. “I paid to have a schooner stay behind. My assets are onboard, enough to start a new life in New York with my cousins. Don’t cry,” she said at the sound of Max’s whimper. “You’re about to leave Nassau liked you dreamed.”

Max looked at her with pleading whiskey eyes, and Eleanor felt the emotions behind them burn her throat like a shot of her hardest liquor. Right now, she could certainly use the drink, but she hadn’t the foresight to save a bottle and it was better used as fuel in any case.

Eleanor raked her dirt-caked nails through her hair, pressed her palm to her throbbing temple, and looked up at the destruction they left behind. In the twilight darkness, she was certain that the red-orange halo of the burning tavern could be seen by the skirmishes from shore to shore.

The chair had been the first to go. As soon as she heard word that Spanish forces had overtaken the fort, she had stood from the chair, taken it, and slammed it against the nearest wall with a scream. One of the splintered legs was still clutched in her hand when Max had come to her and replaced the wood with the soft, stabilizing warmth of her own palm. The leg was thrown onto the pile of their broken future and Max, without a word, tossed both their drinks at it. The bottle was emptied over the remains by Eleanor, a silent agreement that this libation was the only power they had left.

Neither of them thought twice as they set the chair ablaze and turned the office into a tinderbox.

Max was right. It had never been worth the price it cost to keep it. That _fucking_ chair was a throne which sat atop the corpses of her closest kin and the death of her ideals. Twice, the chair had stolen love away from Max, who was more deserving of love than anyone Eleanor knew. The burning felt like a retribution.

Now, there was nothing left for them here and, whichever side won the war in the Bahamas, the king would find that he had captured a capital of ashes.

“Leaving Nassau was not the goal. Eleanor, all that ever mattered was that you and I—”

“Stop.” Her teeth chattered, stealing away the intensity of her request to avoid any more reminders of what they had been, of what she had thrown away. Max, in her unfailing graciousness, removed her shawl and placed it over her in a poor attempt to keep the chill at bay. “I always hated how hot it was here.”

“New York will be nice. We might see snow when we arrive,” Max said as she stretched out a hand and caught white flakes in her palm. They did not melt. The ash from the blazing buildings drifted around her, adorned her hair, and sat on her long lashes like snow. “We have a boat to catch, Eleanor. We must get up.” The plea had moved from her eyes to her lips.

So long had it been since Eleanor kissed her that it felt as if it had occurred in a reality apart from their own. In that reality, they smiled more, hated less, and were together still, on some other island, with a bag full of black pearls.

In this reality, smoke filled her overworked lungs and she was racked with coughs, which sent stabbing pains up her side and made the dizzying, lightheadedness increase in folds. Only one of them would be making it to New York, and it wasn’t going to be her.

The defeat must have been clear in her expression, because Max shook her head in vehement denial, just like she had before Eleanor betrayed her the first time.

“You need to go,” Eleanor said, but she reached out for Max in contradiction to her words. The moment her blood-soaked hand cupped Max’s cheek, she realized the mistake made by her failing mental functions.

Max, however, did not pull away from the touch, she only took her soot-covered palm and pressed it over the wound in Eleanor’s side that she had left unpressured. “I cannot leave you,” she said again, this time with such conviction that it could have been mistaken as her personal creed.

Asking her not to cry was hopeless now—Eleanor already felt hot tears on her own cheeks. “We both know that’s not true.”

They had already left each other. In the time since their parting, Max had learned to stand on her own two feet, to leverage others, and to advance her position with greater skills than Eleanor possessed. Max had moved on with Anne, and Eleanor was not deluded enough to think that what those two shared was merely some passing fancy.

“I planned this escape for two,” Eleanor said, and wiped a tear from Max’s cheek, but only succeeded in further painting her skin red. “If you find Anne, ask her to go with you.”

At the reminder of Anne, Eleanor was certain that Max would understand that leaving was in her best interest. She had the possibility of a future. The bullet had stolen whatever future Eleanor had left.

Eleanor feebly drew her hand back and closed her eyes against the hurt on Max’s face at the realization that she was once again being forced into a position she had no desire to be in. The sounds of gunshots and clashing swords around them began to fade from her consciousness, and even the smoke hardly seemed to tickle her throat. Distantly, she thought that the prospect of death should terrify her, but the loss of sights and sounds was hardly as terrifying as the moment when she felt Max’s hands slip away—an icy emptiness taking their place.

Even in her final moments, the memory of their parting returned to her as a cruel apparition. _Everyone you have ever loved, you have lost, and it terrifies you._

That was why she preferred to be the lost one.

All she had left to hold onto now was her own blood, which was seeping through her fingers and staining the dirt beneath her. Death by blood-loss. Fitting.

Just as she resigned to let go of this life to which she had desperately clinged, she was startled back into momentary awareness by the feeling of hands on either side of her face. Deliriously, she wondered if Death truly came to carry each and every soul away from its earthly body, she wondered if her mother and her father would happily greet her at Death’s door, and she wondered why the hands were warm.

Death spoke with Max’s voice. “ _Non_ ,” she said angrily. “You do not get to make my decisions. I will not leave you.”

Then, Death kissed her sweetly, as if they had been courting since her birth.

But she recognized the gentle slide of this kiss, the soft caress of these thumbs, and that voice, that voice _was_ Max’s. Max was here. She was still here.

Eleanor, however, was slipping. She reeled against the impending blackout, but she could neither push against the void encroaching upon her thoughts nor could she pull herself towards Max’s wakefulness.

This was one last _almost_. She _almost_ had a second chance.

* * *

The light was blinding, like she had been locked away in some dark cell for weeks and was finally reemerging into the sunlit world. She lifted her hand to shield her eyes, but hit her knuckles against metal and sent the light swaying.

Eleanor took a step back, the ground underfoot made a crisp, crunching sound, and in front of her stood a lantern, which squeaked as it continued to oscillate back and forth, back and forth, with no end in sight. She stilled it herself.

Flakes of white fell around her. She turned her palm up to catch the ashes, but they melted away just as they touched her skin and left behind tiny drops of water. Snowflakes.

“ _Il neige,_ ” said the lantern.

It _was_ snowing. Though that hardly seemed possible when, in her thin clothes fit for the tropics, she wasn’t cold at all.

Cold. She had been cold earlier, hadn’t she?

At the sound of crunching behind her, she spun around to see nothing but the expanse of a field—golden barley heavy with a blanket of snow. It seemed to go on forever, in every direction. A fair distance away, another lantern flickered to life and the unseen presence went towards the light, its snowy footsteps growing softer until it paused as if waiting for her.

With nowhere else to go, Eleanor followed, but only took several steps forward before she found herself in front of the new lantern by some distortion of either time or space.

“Are you dreaming?” the lantern asked.

She was dreaming. There was no sky here. Instead, where grey clouds should have been, there was a blackness that seemed within reach. Just as she began to lift her hand up to the strange void, another lantern caught her eye, and the footsteps began again.

Not wishing to be left alone, Eleanor followed.

“Does it hurt?” this lantern asked.

She did not hurt, she did not feel much of anything, but she had a vague sense that she was supposed to hurt. Above, a gunshot rang out, making her body flinch and her ears ring. She remembered, then, that a Spanish soldier had taken aim at Max, but the bullet never reached its target.

A wash of cold, of pain, and of fear came over her all at once. She clutched her side, where the bullet had hit, and looked down to see that it bloomed red. When she withdrew them again, red rose petals fell to the pure, white snow. The presence took her hands, calmed her, and gently tugged her towards the next lantern.

Too stunned to refuse, Eleanor followed.

This lantern stood next to a stone bench, which Eleanor took a seat at immediately and proceeded to stare at her hands and contemplate whether or not this wintery plane was a limbo issued to her for her impious life.

“You almost died,” the lantern said from where it sat beside her on the bench.

_Almost._ That was the most uplifting almost she had ever heard.

“But we made it. The harbour here is beautiful.”

Eleanor looked up and, sure enough, a coastline had materialized in front of them and they were no longer seated on a bench, but in a rowboat.

On the other side of the water, through the sheer curtain of snow, she could see a final lantern waiting for her.

Knowing her destination, Eleanor rowed.

* * *

The first thing Eleanor saw when she opened her eyes was a vase filled with brilliant red roses so fragrant that she could smell them from where she lay. The flowers were framed by a frosted window, through which she could see that it was snowing over a busy harbour, a harbour which she did not recognize, but knew in her heart that it must have been New York Harbor.

The first thing she felt was a pair of warm hands clasping hers as if they had never let go, as if they would never let go again.

Max.

“Eleanor?” she asked, hope, disbelief, and relief all tied up in one word.

In response, Eleanor squeezed her hand as tightly as she could and, with great effort, tilted her head towards Max, once again using her voice as a guide. What seemed like mere hours ago, in the bloodied streets, Eleanor had thought that she would never see Max again, that she would die with Max being the final image captured in her eyes, but here she was, waking to this amazing woman, who was more radiant than the sparkling snow or the luminous lanterns, and who burned with a passion greater than the fires of Nassau.

“God, it’s good to see you,” she said, her voice dry and rough with disuse.

Max flung herself from her seat and wrapped her arms around Eleanor in an embrace that they had gone too long without. The angle caused strain to Eleanor’s side, but she was not about to end this herself, not when Max was shaking with tiny hiccups, kissing her hair, and whispering prayers of thanks to a number of heavenly hosts.

When the moment was over, Max pulled back and looked at Eleanor with the same tenderness she had once been blessed with, before pearls, and gold, and _Urca de Lima_.

They had both finally made it, together, in a small room in New York, and Eleanor, too, looked at Max and saw not an _almost_ but an _absolute._

**Author's Note:**

> Liberties were taken with history during the making of this fic. Oops. Leave a comment if you love me (or the fic...that too). <3


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